Swimming Abilities?

How strong of a swimmer should you be before you take the OW class?


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I think a major part of it has to deal with what frame of mind does the person enter when they hit the water. Obviously swimming skills play a key role, the more you swim the more comfortable and confident a person feels in the water and will definitely be an asset to anyone doing their OW. People who are unfamiliar or not as comfortable in water would benefit from swimming classes, or even intro to snorkeling, so that they feel more at home in the water. When meeting a new dive, I always ask how they feel about being in water and gauge their response accordingly.
 
I'll be a wise guy. Who that is taking up scuba would need intro. to snorkeling? What do you do there, learn how to look down, kick and blow water out the pipe????
 
I'll be a wise guy. Who that is taking up scuba would need intro. to snorkeling? What do you do there, learn how to look down, kick and blow water out the pipe????
I wouldn't call it snorkling- I'd call it skindiving and it is the walk part of the DIVERS EVOLUTION to me!
CRAWL, WALK AND THEN RUN!
SWIM, SKINDIVE AND THEN SCUBA!
" The return to the sea for the monkeys!" * said in a Richard Attenborough ascent!
I'd say duck diving and experiencing equalization would be 2 good reasons to try it first- but most of all, to get used to using fins and learning how to maneuver efficiently underwater without using the hands, like most very strong swimmers do! lol 555555555

I will be teaching my babbee gurl, to skindive and firstly we will use no snorkles or weights, just fins and a mask (swimmimg googles first), as the snorkle lets you bludge on the surface and I want her to work her legs and thighs to keep them looking prime and toned.
 
I'll be a wise guy. Who that is taking up scuba would need intro. to snorkeling? What do you do there, learn how to look down, kick and blow water out the pipe????

I have had many potential customers for DSD/Intro dives that had never snorkeled. My bosses hated that most of the time I told these potential customers that I thought they shoud be able to snorkel around our local "point" and come out smiling, before they tried diving.

Free and not free snorkel lessons happen often at that nearby beach.
 
IMO it's a two part question. Technically you don't have to be able to swim at all to scuba. You just have to breath off a reg and put enough air in your BC to be neutrally buoyant or float at the surface.

Plenty of 'strong swimmers' have drowned diving. A failure to ditch weights is often cited as a contributing factor to some of the drownings. Doesn't matter how good a swimmer you are if you have bunch lead around your waist.

That being said, the stronger a swimmer you are, the more comfortable you feel in the water. You are less likely to panic in crisis, you have better air consumption, and is safer all around in general.

It is not an absolute prerequisite, but it definitely helps. It depends more on how comfortable your GF feels breathing air at 20 feet under water if she is not a good swimmer.
 
the stronger a swimmer you are, the more comfortable you feel in the water
Does anyone have any facts to back up this statement?

I have contended the "strong swimmer" vs. "non-swimmer" argument is stupid AND, more importantly, the wrong issue. The important issue, in my always and ever so humble opinion, is "comfort in the water." It seems that the "strong swimmer" contingent equates "water comfort" with "swimming ability" as if those are the only options. Me, I think that is just so much BS -- although it is truly, and merely, my opinion as I have absolutely no evidence to support one position or another. (And, I suspect, no one else does either!)

I do NOT know the definition of a "strong swimmer." In one of my classes, we had a swim test and much to the disgust of my two classmates, I beat them all hollow. One, 30 years younger and quite buff, struggled through the test (but he could have struggled for a long time) and the other, a former military diver, also struggled (and he could have struggled for a long time). The issue was that neither of them had terribly efficient strokes -- they just used strength and power to get through the water. Me, having been raised on (and in) the water (dad was a former college swim coach and college/national competitor) I was just much more efficient.

BUT WE WERE ALL COMFORTABLE IN THE WATER and could stay in, on, or under the water for hours at a time.

The key to this doesn't appear to be swimming ability but MENTAL COMFORT. I contend that someone who can float on the surface for half an hour while discussing politics, even though all they could do is a dog paddle, would be just fine -- and a whole lot more "comfortable" than someone who, through mental determination, learned the strokes and powered through whatever swim test you wanted to design.

But I don't have any evidence this is true.
 
Peter, I would be more in agreement with you on this.....swimming skills themselves are not even used in diving....I think Freediving skills and comfort would equate to far better comfort in the water doing scuba, and better scuba skills as a result....
There is no reason to require masters swimming ability....however, the cardio component of being able to swim well DOES meake some sense.. If cardio was what we are trying to set up minimums for with the swim test, then a much better measure would be a timed snorkel and fin swimming session over a 1/4 mile or a half a mile. Or more--at least this would actually mean something that relates to an ability most divers are at some point likely to use.
For one thing, a swimmer pulls themself along primarily with their arms, which is exactly the opposite of what a diver is supposed to do---and this also means that the neovascualrization of their training is to the WRONG MUSCLE GROUPS... It would be far better to train as a cyclist, develop cardio and neovascularization of the correct muscles for fin swimming....Every single cyclist I know that has taken up freediving or scuba has a far more powerful and efficient kick on scuba, than the normal diver.
 
Peter Guy, DanVolker, Your two posts best illustrate stuff I've been saying on SB for a couple of years now. But there are some of those "strong" swimmers that disagree with much of it.

ozzydamo, Yes, when you dive to the bottom snorkeling it becomes skin diving of course, and I agree knowing how to do that is important.

Halemano, I agree it makes sense to have DSD students snorkel first. I also find it odd that quite a few people, as you say, would try DSD before ever snorkeling.
 
I would say learning scba / saba has helped me way more then swimming did with scuba... Just saying.
 
Just a few real world benefits of real freediving skills for a scuba diver :

  • You surface to find no boat in sight......If you are a skilled freediver, and you have a snorkel with you, you could dump your tank and begin a surface swim toward shore---a freediver on the surface can cover an enormous distance, compared to a bobbing cork of a scuba divers hanging with inflated bc.
  • If the weather got bad, and huge waves begin, again, the freediver with snorkel should have zero problems.... I have freedived easily in 12 foot seas.
  • Scuba diver has catastrophiuc failure of regulator, and buddy is distant and swimming away from you----Freediver trained competent scuba diver should find it incredibly easy to free ascend--far more so than typical scuba diver.
  • OW divers in their first couple of years will TYPICALLY dive overweighted, and at a swimming angle up to 45 degrees ( not horizonta, not efficient). If they were freedive trained, they would understand optimal weighting, and on thier scuba dives they would find perfect weighting....also, as freedivers, they learn to swim horizontally and efficiently, where as typical OW divers DO NOT ( because they don't have to..freedivers have to be efficient, or the duration underwater would be too short).
  • Comfort levels....Freedivers who go on to scuba dive, know how easy it is for THEM to swim up, or swim anywhere, so comfort levels are very high. Freedivers that become scuba divers can typically handle much bigger currents than normal divers, and will usually have very low sac rates, again due to efficiency and knowing how to slow down their heart rate( which slows down breathing rates).
 
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